Foreword

One year ago I was approached by an enthusiastic would-be author who asked my permission to write a novel on the events of the RS-77 case. My reflex reaction was to decline and refuse all support for the project, but once I heard her out, I began to understand her point-of-view. The events of that case were still rather fresh on my mind, and I was at first very unwilling to open old wounds. In my haste, I had mistaken her enthusiasm as a hunger for popularity, but she was far from the tabloid-hunter I'd first taken her to be. Her passion came from a drive—the same drive, I discovered, that has pushed me to move forward from the past.

Believe as you like, this novel isn't about me. If it were, I would have never given it my approval. The Price of Turnabout happens to involve a large portion of my life, as well as the lives of others, but in the end it expands far beyond merely that. It isn't a story about the law. It is a story about the meaning of justice and the price of truth. It is both a memorial to the past and a warning to the future generation of attorneys. For that reason—and for that reason alone—do I give this novel, and its author, my full endorsement.

I must agree that it's hardly an easy read. I finished it over the space of one month, taking deliberate pauses in-between to reflect. At times, I feel as though these pages pulse with a life of their own, and then I wonder if—in reality—it is my heart that I've set out on the market's self and not a chronicle of the RS-77 case. I haven't been able to say this about many novels, but I can honestly state that reading The Price of Turnabout has been a personal experience; it is every bit as real as the days these events occurred.

To readers, I say: take caution. What you are about to venture into may be shocking and unfamiliar territory. I hope that RS-77 will envelop your minds and refuse to leave.

To attorneys, I say: take these words with the weight that they deserve. A day is coming when we may all be disbarred at the whim of the judge or the word of the opposition. The law is not absolute, but justice does not change. The truth is the truth. Man did not create it, nor can man taint it. The law, unfortunately, is not so.

To my father: "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

Thank you.

Miles Edgeworth, Prosecutor